This year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary, Ezra Edelman, has been slightly rebuked by the Academy. New rules announced today would have made it impossible for his multi part project, OJ: Made in America, from being nominated.

The Academy now says multi part films or limited series will not be eligible at all to compete for an Oscar. This is a big deal because the doc community was upset over “OJ.” For one thing, it was made for ESPN, for TV, and many felt it shouldn’t have been in the running for that reason alone.

Whoops! So sorry then to Ava Duvernay and the others who worked on single films as in past years and then got knocked out by OJ. It’s not going to happen again.

The Academy also says that prior to nominations, if you want to serve food to an Academy member in conjunction with a movie, there’d better be a screening attached to it. This is more of the campaigning rules which frankly, I think, have contributed to the low ratings of the Oscar show. After the nominations are announced, the Academy now frowns on all campaigning.

This means all parties cease, as does publicity. Next year, this means that between January 23rd and March 4th there will be silence in the press regarding the Oscars. It’s a big mistake. Without the press stoking the Oscar campaigns during those six weeks, there will be even fewer viewers for the big night. These are the Oscars– they’re supposed to be fun. It’s not a federal election.

Author

Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News. He writes for Parade magazine and has written for Details, Vogue, the New York Times, Post, and Daily News and many other publications. He is the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals.